The Trojan Women

Troy has fallen, the men are dead, and the play opens on what is left: women waiting on a smoking beach to learn which Greek soldier will own them. Hecuba loses her daughters and then her grandson. Cassandra goes to Agamemnon speaking prophecies nobody believes. Andromache watches the Greeks carry Astyanax off to throw him from the walls. There is almost no plot, only one loss after another, and that is exactly the design. Euripides produced it in 415 BCE, months after Athens had killed the men of Melos and enslaved the women and children, and his audience knew precisely who was being described. Few works have said less about glory and more about what war costs. Free in PDF and EPUB.